Tis the season to be cooking…

Confession: I have way more cookbooks than I need.

What can I say? I have gotten rid of many, and still have 15 of them.

There are those I use frequently, the old standbys–and there are those I hardly look at. Several from dear friends. Multiple church cookbooks, special for regional flavor. Some with beautiful full-color photos on every page, fun to browse. Some full of typos, quaint phrasing, and lame poetry.

Here are five of my favorites, and why I like them:

[amazon_link id=”0836136977″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Mennonite Country-Style Recipes and Kitchen Secrets[/amazon_link]

Esther H. Shank

• My go-to book always
• Simple ingredients
• Perfect layout—attention to detail, easy to read and follow
• Covers the full gamut of kitchen experience—a recipe for everything
• Additional cooking, cleaning, and canning tips

[amazon_link id=”156148685X” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook: feasting with your slow cooker[/amazon_link]

Dawn J. Ranck & Phyllis Pellman Good

• How to make anything and everything via crock pot
• Indexed by ingredient—easy to use what you have on hand

[amazon_link id=”B005FAG81K” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]The Practical Produce Cookbook[/amazon_link]

Ray & Elsie Hoover

• Contains a wealth of information on garden produce, organized by vegetable
• Detailed specs on how to grow it, eat it, cook it, preserve it, store it—a superbly helpful summertime guide
• Includes creatively non-traditional recipes as well as the old standbys.

[amazon_link id=”014311817X” target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Jan Karon’s Mitford Cookbook & Kitchen Reader[/amazon_link]

Jan Karon & Martha McIntosh

• An all-around fun book to display in your kitchen
• Contains snippets from the Mitford series, and recipes for foods mentioned in the books
• Not a go-to book, more the kind you’d curl up with on a chilly day
• Recipes for good old Southern cooking—coconut cake, chicken and dumplings, summer squash casserole, deep-dish apple pie.

[amazon_link id=”B000J289M0″ target=”_blank” container=”” container_class=”” ]Mennonite Community Cookbook[/amazon_link]

• An oldie goldie, compiled from Mennonite communities all over the United States and Canada by EMU graduate Mary Emma Showalter.
• For me, this is a book rich with legacy and history. Contains old recipes such as Apple Grunt, Hasty Pudding, and Pickled Pigs Feet, and stories about “how Grandmother did it in her day.”
• Again, more to treasure than to go-to, though it contains a few must-have recipes like Corn Fritters and Barbecued Hamburger.

I still want to find a really good kids’ cookbook. Any suggestions? I have one from Betty Crocker en route.

What other cookbooks do you like?

*****

This post contains affiliate links.